The Petch House

ListWise

Saturday, October 04, 2008

What I know now, I may not have purchased the big chunk of curly redwood. That thing was a bitch to work with and the yield was very low. It was charred on one side, which is not uncommon, but I didn’t expect it to be charred on the inside.

The trees live for a couple of thousand years so its inevitable that its going to get scorched by fire at some point. I guess this one caught fire and the tree grew around the burned part. When I cut in to it there was a big vein of charcoal, along with a little dry-rot near the outside edge of the burned area.

On top of that, I really don’t have the tools to deal with this. What I needed was a chain saw. I kept telling myself I should call and borrow one, but I also kept telling myself that I’m almost through.

I ended up with about 30 1-inch thick pieces that range from 3 to 5 inches wide and 1 to 2 feet long. There is also still one small piece left to be cut up. The quality is not as good as what I got out of the two slabs, either. It’s not that it is bad – it is very nice, tight grained curly redwood. Its just not as good as the other stuff. It is not quite as dense and the color is a little lighter.

At first I wasn’t sure what I could do with it. The pieces as so short. I will need 5 short pieces in the face-frame in between the drawers, but that’s not much. What I’ve decided to do is to use this for the trim work on the middle section. You can see in the picture below there are little 5-inch long strips of wood that separate the squares. I’m going to need close to 50 of those to trim out all of the panels, so this stuff should work well for that.

In other news, the last part for the planer came on Friday, so that is back up and running. The last piece of the tool puzzle is the joiner. If one is on sale tomorrow, I’ll probably snag it. I’ve missed out on a few used ones on Craig’s List over the past month. You really gotta move fast. Who knew they were so popular.

Also, I got the 1X6 redwood yesterday from the guy in Willow Creek. Sure enough, he brought it to my work in the back of his pick-up. It is really nice wood. Not all of it is vertical grain, but it is all nice tight grained, clear-heart redwood. I also got an additional 4-feet of curly redwood from him. He told me he has more, so its nice to know I’ve got a source.